


And she names the sky her own

by lilith_morgana



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 23:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16820431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: She’s a girl, no longer a child. She’s not a flower.





	And she names the sky her own

**Author's Note:**

> Queenie and JKR claims Leta is "a taker, not a giver". Bah, humbug.

_The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much_  
_to you—_  
Claudia Rankine, from ‘Citizens’

\---  
  


She’s a girl, no more than four or five and dreads the empty pages in her notebooks so she fills them with drawings before she learns how to write. Dragons to cover all the edges, a heavy rain from a cloud up in the left corner, a warm beat of a sun to the right. Bowtruckles, lilies, unicorns and centaurs; she draws whatever she can think of hunched over her books at the wide desk in her bedchamber.  
  
Drawings to frame herself in the world, to give a context where there’s nothing but distant paintings of pureblood relatives and those cold notes in Corvus’s voice whenever he looks at her for a second too long. There are sons and there are _flowers_ and she refuses to call him father but she cannot refuse his power over her.  
  
The trick, she learns, is to never allow herself the empty spaces so she draws. A roaring nundus that overpowers a pathetic little man, pale against the desert sand; a pack of selkies lasting for three full pages; clabberts leaping up and down across a page where she’s been forced to practice her handwriting; mokes and nogtails she’s seen pictures of in old books in their library.  
  
Later she learns how to write and the stories that come out of her quill are _endless_ .  
  
  
*

  
There’s a secluded nook in the Slytherin common room that she dubs her own. Out of sight, out of mind - not even the giant squib can be spotted in her corner as there are no windows. Leta sinks into the greyness, exhaling and inhaling in greedy gulps.  
  
The dust in there wraps the furniture in silver blankets and whoever cast the cleaning spells must have been neglecting to include the top of cupboards and cabinets. It’s familiar in a way that scant few things are here; it makes her think of Dina, the only childhood friend she had managed to make.  
  
Dina Turpin who has near-black eyes and a house full of Muggle treasures and dust and a _mother_ \- open arms, open face, a wide crooked smile - too preoccupied with her research and passions to manage the household at any great detail. Leta adores her and not only because she stuffs them full of pumpkin juice and tart and lets her hand run across the back of Leta’s head whenever she passes by, offers to do her hair the way she does Dina’s. Leta nods, wordless and _starving_ . She feels like a beacon then, like a burning object, craving the tiniest of affections and for a while she wonders if Dina’s mother is a Legilimens but learns later, at Hogwarts, that it’s just Leta that is obvious. _An open book Miss Lestrange_ but she doesn’t mind it as long as she gets to bask in the presence of the Turpins. It’s a haven she’ll sneak off to visit, hiding her fear in her pockets and her words deep in her throat.  
  
_Hello love_ , Dina’s mother says every time, greeting Leta as though she hadn’t ran away at all, as though she is not typically a fugitive in this house but an honoured guest.  
  
Dina is sorted into Ravenclaw with the hat barely touching her head and Leta digs her nails into her palms as she walks up to the chair. The massive, winding vastness of the great hall spins before her closed eyes - some Gryffindors giggle at that, she recalls their shrill, foolish voices from the train - and she thinks of father, thinks of water, of her mother, of her brother’s death, the lengths she must go to in order to survive in this castle, to show them all that she _matters_ \--  
  
When the hat with all its dramatic flair yells Slytherin, Leta exhales raggedly, something breaking through her body and she can’t even tell if it’s grief or joy. Hands balled into fists she rises to her feet and looks around, waiting for some sort of sign somewhere but the only thing she can see is Professor Beery’s slight nod and Professor Dumbledore’s pursed mouth that he probably thinks is neutral. Leta searches for Dina’s face in the crowd but she’s looking at the Head Girl at the Ravenclaw table; they’re all _looking_ at each other until Leta leaves the chair and walks down to the tables.  
  
“Not here,” a blonde witch hisses under her breath the moment Leta is about to slide into an open space in between two large boys who look like they’ll be trying out for Beaters in their first year. “Are you _blind_ , Slytherin?”  
  
Another voice, calm and low to her right now and Leta spins, mouth open. It’s not until now she sees the red and yellow, the colours overwhelming her from all sides.  
  
“Come sit at the Slytherin table instead,” the girl with the low voice says. “I’m Aurelia Prince, your Prefect.”  
  
“Oh,” Leta manages. She feels like throwing up.  
  
Everyone stares, giggling.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Everyone stares.

 _Different, different, different_ echo the steps on the cobblestones and the ever-shifting stairs of the castle.  
  
_What’s with the hair, eh_ and she’s afraid of heights, too, afraid to fall down and crush her own face against the floor that isn’t even visible from the endless way from Divination. _What sort of witch is afraid of such banalities, I mean truly what is her problem?_ As though Leta would not have reason to fear everything between heaven and hell, as though that is not true for everyone. It’s not until Hogwarts she learns properly how foolish people are, how little they know.  
  
The things that set her apart from the others are like ink on her skin, visible curses on her face - boils, warts, half a beard like the caricatures she has seen in Muggle literature. She might as well carry a sign. There is no kinship here, nowhere to be found.  
  
Their first lesson in Herbology she looks too long at the mandrake pots, trips over roots on the floor and lands in a pile of fungus, spitting hexes as she crawls back to her feet. One of them hits Leah, the inexplicably popular Hufflepuff with atrocious pigtails who runs shrieking to the medical ward with green-tinted swellings popping up on her cheeks. Leta cannot stop a giggle from escaping despite it all; the sight of that wounded vanity is too much to bear.  
  
Hundred and fifty-five points from Slytherin and a calmly furious lecture from Professor Bulstrode later, she sits down by the lake, kicking grass and gravel into the water.  
  
“You’ll - _ah_ \- You’ll scare the plimpies doing that.”  
  
Leta looks up over her shoulder at a tall boy standing there. He’s not looking straight at her but seems preoccupied with the ground, with something in his pocket, with the way the surface of the lake rhythmically is disturbed by small creatures leaping up to catch a fly. He’s both outside his own body and vividly present at the heart of it in a most peculiar fashion.  
  
“I beg your pardon?” She’s not polite, not usually, but after today she thinks that’s how she’ll go about it. Tuck herself carefully inside an air of polite replies and no fuss. Above all: no _fuss_.  
  
“The plimpies.” He takes a step closer. “Fish creatures.”  
  
“I know what plimpies _are_.”  
  
The boy nods twice, as though one nod is for her and one for him. “They fear sudden movements. When you throw all that grass into their home-”  
  
He shuffles his feet where he stands, trying to regain his ground in himself perhaps. It’s what she does outside Potions class, after Transfiguration, upon entering the Great Hall where everything feels like the first night.  
  
“You’re the Hufflepuff,” she cuts him off, slightly more interested now that a shade of familiarity has moved over his odd face.  
  
A slight pause, she wonders if he’s as exhausted as she is from being recognised.  
  
“I’m _a_ Hufflepuff. As is evident from my robes, I suppose.” He gestures vaguely to the yellow crest.  
  
He _is_ exhausted, too, she realises and quells the impulse to roll her eyes at him. That is not appropriate manners and her tutors have all strongly concurred regarding the importance of _those_ . _Our bloodline may be superior but that alone won’t take you anywhere, not anymore. These are dark times, indeed._  
  
“I meant the Hufflepuff that those Gryffindors were shoving into the lake last week.” Leta looks at the dark water, how it rests there calmly but could swallow a thousand over-eager first-years if allowed. A shudder runs through her; she fights it back to the dark corners where it belongs.  
  
Scamander, she remembers eventually. Scabby Scamander and his twitchy face that some boys had taken offence with the way some boys - certain boys, with that bloodlust carved into their features - do and she hadn’t been there herself but she can imagine the crowds watching as Scamander had to crawl up from the deep water.  
  
“Ah,” he looks up quickly, then his gaze travels back to the ground. “That would be me.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t mine either, so there’s that, I suppose.”

Scamander takes a seat in a quick movement - swift for someone so gangly, but not smooth and he drops his textbooks in a messy pile that lands between them. She reaches out to help him pick them up; his fingers prod at hers and her nails scratch at the skin of the freckled, sun-kissed back of his hand. He smiles a little, as if he’s reassuring her or himself.   
  
The lake looks calmer now that she’s stopped disturbing it. Behind the treetops across the water, the sun is about to set and soon, Leta knows, they will return to the castle for supper and homework.  
  
Everything she has read about the magical education, each and every unofficial scribble or authorized autobiography chronicling the famous witches and wizards have mentioned the near-magical ingredients of kinship and camaraderie in the castle. Formative years, lasting friendships, character-building adventure and Leta hasn’t found a single scrap of it so far. These past few minutes are by far the longest time someone has been consistently friendly towards her - and that includes the professors, too, she thinks with an inward sneer. She’s reluctant to let him slip out of her hands again.  
  
“Moira Bagshot in Gryffindor claims I’m a maledictus,” she says after a moment’s silence.  
  
Scamander makes an incredulous sound at the back of his mouth. “That’s _absurd_.”  
  
Leta shrugs. Doesn’t tell him she’s almost hoping it was the truth, that it might explain why there is something _wrong_ inside her - a fragment missing, a fractured image that someone has broken. _Damaged bloodlines_ , someone echoes in her memory. _Not so strange, considering._  
  
“Yes,” she says instead. She has found that it’s simple to lie about these things. About everything.  
  
“You would have noticed if you were. I mean, it’s obvious that you’re not - though, if you were, it would show.”  
  
“It would explain a few things,” she mutters and she expects him to ask her to clarify but he looks at the water, then down into his pocket.  
  
“Which animal?” he asks, completely ignoring her remark or not knowing what to say in response to it. She can't blame him. “I, er, meant Moira Bagshot’s mildly preposterous idea - which-”  
  
“A spider,” Leta says and looks at the water again. Too many arms and legs, she can’t ever gain full mastery of her own body, has visited the Hospital wing after every flying class so far. Ugly, poisonous spider. There’s a sharp kind of _sense_ to it.  
  
Scamander snorts softly which makes her look up, catch his gaze. There’s a subdued sort of anger there but it’s not aimed at her. And she notices - not without jealousy - that it isn't aimed at himself, either.   
  
“Don’t listen to that.” And there’s something about the way he looks at her, she thinks. Merely _looks_ at her with eyes so wide that she could fall right into them and never find her way back home.  
  
“I don’t.” She shrugs again. It’s no more convincing as a display of carelessness this time either but practice, they say, makes perfect.  
  
Her company slips one hand into the massive pockets of his rather odd-looking overcoat that looks too warm for early autumn but then again now that she thinks about it she has not yet seen him without it. When he holds out his palm again there’s a tiny, grey-silvery egg there; he nods at her.  
  
“Keep it warm. Place it in hot water overnight. Or in your bed, if you can.” Picking it up gently with two fingers he plants it very slowly in her hand, right over her lifeline. His thumb presses down on her palm. “Can you do that?”  
  
“Uh.” Leta frowns. “What is it?”  
  
“You’ll see.” He smiles - cracks her wide-open for half a heartbeat as she finds there is something about him that makes it hard to breathe - and gets to his feet. “Be gentle with it.”  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
She’s a girl, no longer a child, and she sits with a small egg in her cupped hand staring at the Slytherin tapestry that moves slightly on the wall. A forest of witches and wizards, a galaxy full of magic that has mattered. Hippea Lestrange, slayer of unicorns and her husband Ischys who devoted his life to study the uses of unicorn blood. Such prominent members of her line of blood, such power.  
  
Gently, she taps on the silvery egg.   
  
She’s a girl, no longer a child. She’s not a flower.


End file.
